13 August 2009
Our Trains. Their Tanks
Iron Road poster.
Anyone who remembers the Batman television series of the
1960s is familiar with the word "camp". "Camp", simply put, meant that something - like Batman - was so bad that
it was good.
I hadn't really thought much about "camp" until the other night when I sat down to watch Part 1 of Iron Road, a
Canada-China co-production allegedly telling the story of the hardships of the 17,000 Chinese labourers
hired to do the dirty work during the building of the CPR in the 1880s.
But, unlike Batman, Iron Road isn't so bad that it's good. It's so bad it's just bad, period.
The character around which the plot (?) revolves is called Little Tiger (Sun Li), a waif of a girl (whom we're supposed to believe is
really a waif of a boy) who ingratiates him/herself into the good graces of the Canadian agent (Sam Neill) sent to Hong Kong to
recruit cheap manpower. The child wants to go to Canada to find the father who abandoned the family for the sake of a better life for
all. (I know, I know. Just bear with me. I'll be as quick as I can.)
The suspension of disbelief required of the viewer to accept Little Tiger as anything other than a girl requires nothing less than
massive doses of recreational narcotics. Or maybe a full-frontal lobotomy. Or both. I felt like screaming at Sam Neill,
"For crying out loud, Sam - IT'S A GIRL!" But, never mind. It gets worse.
The back alleys of Hong Kong on an 1880s New Year's Eve appear to have been decorated by an advance contingent of the Rotary Club.
Cherry coloured lights are tastefully strung above uncrowded streets filled with orderly fruit and vegetable vendors. If we're to
believe Iron Road, then there's probably more chaos at a Forest Hill yard sale today than there was in a Hong Kong market a century
ago.
Which brings me to the gangsters.
The well-dressed heavies in Iron Road were menacing only to someone without a decent sense of colour
co-ordination or those lacking a flair for flamboyance. If there is a reason they were even included in the story line,
maybe it was to give Little Tiger a chance to show off her kung fu skills. Oh, yes, dear reader - they were kung fu fightin' all over
the place, Little Tiger flying through the air dispatching the fashionable thugs like tenpins, all the while her cunning disguise
perfectly intact.
But, none of this was the worst of it. No, the worst of it, the very worst of it, wasn't even on the screen. The worst of it shows up
in the production poster. It shows Little Tiger fleeing in the path of a steam locomotive as the symbol of unfeeling power bears down
on her.
This, of course, is exactly what you get when you enter into a co-production with a ham-fisted totalitarian
regime that wouldn't know subtlety from a sledgehammer and wants you to know that our trains were as bad in their day as The People's
Republic of China's tanks were in theirs at Tiananmen Square.
The CPR Museum in Revelstoke devotes three rooms to Chinese railway labourers. Newspaper clippings of the day make clear the depth of
hostility, danger, and racism those workers encountered.
In Victoria, on Pandora Street or in Fan Tan Alley, it isn't difficult to find people who remember "the bachelor society"
and the hated Head Tax that perpetuated it.
In the Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point, the bones of hundreds still wait to go home. The nameless men who died building the CPR are
not forgotten, nor is that dark chapter of Canada's past.
Better, though, that we forget high-camp nonsense like Iron Road. Better for all of us.
Dan Christie.
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